Sure, then you get an eternal universe and a finite duration observable big-banging universe. Lots of models like that. I think, if we were to take this as seriously as a philosophy professor might, the salient observation is that time is not a clock. This supposed philosopher might believe that it ...

What you are proposing is that because there is an infinite extent in one direction, there cannot exist points at some finite distance from the origin. This makes no sense. I was more thinking of infinite in both directions - it started an infinite amount of time ago being the significant point. Ok...

What you are proposing is that because there is an infinite extent in one direction, there cannot exist points at some finite distance from the origin. This makes no sense. Or perhaps what you are observing is that if you have something with an infinite extent, say a real line or an entire universe,...

You could call them coincidences but thats just another name for correlations.. Oh me yarm NO! That is precisely , not science. (ok why is "oh em gee", literally the 3-letter acronym, censored with "oh me yarm" which sounds like gibberish? I find my words being replaced with gib...

jewish_scientist wrote:Even if having a disadvantage makes it impossible for you to roll high enough to pass, you would still have a 5% chance of passing. You forgot that rolling a 20 always results in a success.

Chapter 36: Janet(s) How good can the Good Place residents (human and otherwise) be if none of them thought to look into why they haven't gotten any new humans in the past 500 years? In the original fake good place, the neighborhood was billed as being full of people who all arrived on ...

Is it just me or is "everyone's been brain-washed by Mercator" thing really just the assumption that other people don't know about map projections? I was taught about map projections in primary school, and hasn't everyone looked at a globe at least once? Worse is the idea that any other m...

Most of them. The thing is, brains tend to be significantly smaller than the entire universe. Ultimately, this is an argument about entropy, and a low entropy universe is much, much less probable than a low entropy brain no matter how it is arranged . Consider that in reality, your extremely improb...

1, yes, all of the prior probability talk is for models that embed the observable universe into a larger universe, like an inflationary multiverse. (not an everett many worlds multiverse.) It's also possible to consider BB in a more limited model that says nothing about the likelihood of the univers...

I'd say learn enough to have meaningful and useful discussions with the tech folks you work with, but don't worry about getting your coding chops up to a fully professional "the codebase is on my shoulders" level, especially not before starting.

What I was saying is that the answer is yes by definition. Oxford defines 'dick' as a "stupid or contemptible man," and 'contemptible' is synonymous with 'villainous', so 'dick' is a word with moral meaning. This is quite possibly the most obtuse syllogism I've seen used sincerely, and I'...

What I was saying is that the answer is yes by definition. Oxford defines 'dick' as a "stupid or contemptible man," and 'contemptible' is synonymous with 'villainous', so 'dick' is a word with moral meaning. This is quite possibly the most obtuse syllogism I've seen used sincerely, and I'...

The branch of ethics where you magically know what task everyone is best suited for and can inform them at an early age so they can study to be excellent at their given task. Only if you magically know what task everyone is best suited for can you proclaim any ethical obligation to perform the task...

The mere fact that something is virtuous doesn't obligate people to do it. Yeah we'll see how kindly the octopuses take to that position once they come into their power. I though lobsters were the ethical example of the moment. Lobsters are dumb as rocks, I couldn't give a shit about them. They do ...

Who cares about the species continuing? I do not think any of these ethical frameworks would identify humans as the best species. We should be spending our puny lives laying down palms in front of the octopuses.

But surely the poor schmoe you are trying to impress into scholastic research could easily make the exact same argument to any of these ridiculous interlocutors to defend a vacation as a sanitation worker or a IT specialist or optometrist or whatever.

For sharing, it also matters who paid for the research. You take a public grant, the public gets to hear about it. This is something like "academic professional ethics." For the former question though, it is so obviously false I cannot imagine people having entertained the 'yes' position. ...

Yeah, it's supposed to demonstrate a problem with a model of a universe in which the Big Bang was the result of a statistical fluctuation. In such a model, it would indeed be far more likely to get a brain (or whatever) popping up out of a random fluctuation than an entire low entropy universe. So ...